Thursday, 17 October 2013

Forgotten Nightmares – White Night Review

Forgotten Nightmares – White Night Review

By Owen Jones (Extractor of Folders)

White Night, for those
of you who don’t know, is a Custom Story for Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This
means, as it is a mod, it is completely free of charge for anyone who owns the
original game. It also means it's developed by a single person without the aid of money, and despite this it's a full length experience. Considering it is most
likely the most well known and well acclaimed of Amnesia’s mods I thought it
might be a good place to start a (hopefully) frequent series of Custom Story
reviews, but if you have made or know of a good mod for me to review I’d be
happy to do so. Anyway, here's a trailer for you:

To begin perhaps giving you an idea of what the games like
is in order? No? Well fuck you, I’ll continue anyway.

Q: What is the
level design like in White Night?

A: Impressive.

Q: How good is the
writing?

A: Impressive.

Q: And the
locations? What’s the scope of the mod like?

A: Impressive.

Q: What’s your
favourite adjective?

A: Impressive.

Q: Who’s asking
these generic questions?

A: That isn’t
important.

Q: Of what quality
is the voice acting?

A: This Question
and Answer session has been terminated.

Q: Does that mean
it’s bad?

A: ...

Just to reiterate this is a pretty long Mod; it took me
around 5 hours at my lumbering pace to finish. Also this was made by a single
man on a budget for nothing to make a game that costs nothing at all (presuming
you already own Amnesia). The word you’re looking for is impressive.

A bridge over troubled, not to mention haunted, water

The game takes place is an asylum. Don’t be put off by the
unoriginality of location though, as things gradually weirder and weirder the
architecture follows suit, leading to some interesting and original level
design.

There is a certain level of running-and-not-gunning involved, and some basic puzzles (find key,
insert key into lock, gradually apply pressure to door... OH DEAR LORD WHAT THE
HELL IS THAT? Repeat until insane), but I’d say it’s more of a story driven
mod. The gameplay was neither good nor bad enough to be noticeable, so it’s
fairly run of the mill. At a few stages, however, I had problems. For instance
at a few points you have to traverse chasms by platform style jumping. For me these sections
were too long, and there are only finite times you can respawn before losing
all immersion. There was also a puzzle involving a piano that gave some players
grief, but I found it more dumb than annoying.

The plot’s good, but never exceptional.There’s a really good mysterious vibe to it,
and plenty of ambiguity. Have I ever told you how much I love ambiguity? Video
games need to learn that some holes are best left unfilled, and White Night leaves
a good amount to the mind. The end confused me more than intrigued me, which
was a little disappointing because with a bit more polish I could be telling
you how incredible it was and triple-A titles should take note. Perhaps I just
missed something that would have made it more clear to me, but I never felt
overwhelmed. There’s some really interesting stuff on the topic of memories and
sanity, but again a little more development would be nice, though it’s good to have something thought provoking and there's more to think about here than in a lot of games.

Come prepared for strained necks

But what really makes White Night so memorable and spectacular
is the amount of customisation. For starters this is a total conversion, so as
well as having to be opened separately to Amnesia it means that everything,
right down to the menu and loading screen, can be overhauled. White Night is a
shining example of this. Upon starting you’ll be greeted by menu with an
animated background and everything. Instead of clicking on ‘New Game’ you click
on ‘Start new Session’, the ‘load’ text has been replaced by ‘Remember’. It’s
probably worth baring in mind this can be quite confusing, but though I worried
I never clicked on quit instead of save or some such blunder.

The textures in the game have also been changed, including
things from Amnesia (HPL2 engine) and Penumbra (HPL1 engine). This is really
refreshing after the repeated use of so many of Amnesia’s textures, and makes it feel like a completely different experience to Amnesia. Sometimes these did clash or didn’t quite fit in, but
it really isn’t a problem once you get into the mod. There are also a number of
custom textures including replacing the lantern and oil with a torch and
batteries, tinderboxes are now light bulbs (which I would have enjoyed using
more of).

The writings good and fits in well with White Night's
atmosphere. I thankfully couldn’t find any grammatical mistakes (always a worry when
playing Custom Stories). There are a number of cutscene type events, and
although I’m normally against these I enjoyed them and they were well thought
out. The voice acting is, well... distracting. I could never feel emotion in
the voices and reactions never felt realistic. Still, it’s good to see its
inclusion, and I didn’t resort to repeatedly hitting my head against my desk
(or worse quit), which is always nice.

Either the chair was placed on top of the blood stain or someone rubbed blood in under the chair

I feel quite harsh criticising White Night, and it feels
eerily like nitpicking, because it really is an excellent mod that rightfully
deserves its cult status. Original textures and heaps of customization really
make this mod special, and wonderfully weird level design and an ambiguous and
often intriguing plot are welcome. It’s horror themed, but doesn’t try to
impose horror onto you, like so many Custom Stories fall into the trap of doing
(after completing Amnesia I’ve adjusted to that type of horror and just
throwing more at me never really terrifies me any more).

So if you already own Amnesia then I can think of no
possible reason why you shouldn’t play this. It’s free, feels like a full
length game and is thought provoking enough to warrant a playthrough, even if
you’re sick and tired of the whole Custom Story thing.

Installation is nice and easy through Desura, but there’s
also a Mod DB page if you can’t get enough of cursing and/or crying with
despair (or just enjoy extracting files for some reason).

I’ll try to alternate between Indie games and mods, so if
your keen to hear my thoughts on a particular mod (or game for that matter) then
just get in contact and I’ll do my best to please.

This is where you pre-book your descent into insanity. Queues can be long around mid-afternoon